January 27, 201412 yr Hey guys I've recently acquired a IBM M1015 and flashed it to LSI 9211-IT Mode. The flash went properly and the controller works correctly. The issue I've been running into is that I cannot load the operating system. The IBM controller boots correctly and the motherboard has no issues at POST. After POST the server hangs at the "Loading Operating System" message. My flash drive is set to the top of the boot priority in my BIOS. If I remove the cable from the controller (thereby disconnecting all hard drives from the controller) the server boots normally (obviously missing disks.) The IBM controller has one hard drive connected to it, the drive is the parity drive for the system. Thanks for the help.
January 28, 201412 yr Not sure if this is applicable to you or not. I once had a gigabyte motherboard that would exhibit the same behaviour (hanged at the "Loading Operating System" message) and would not boot from the USB. It turned out that the motherboard did not like the USB flash key for some unknown reason. I swapped it out with another, I believe it was a kingston and it work.
January 28, 201412 yr Author I do indeed have a gigabyte motherboard, but this is a new issue. The USB flash key has worked for ~2 years now with no known issues until this one.
January 28, 201412 yr Author Edit: the flash key doesn't make sense either because it does the same thing when I boot the tower without the flash drive inserted, and it does not do the issue when i disconnect the SFF 8087 cable from the HBA.
January 29, 201412 yr Are you sure you have the correct cable from the M1015 to your drive? If you are going from M1015 directly to a SATA port on the HDD you will need a forward breakout cable. Never heard of this problem before when using a reverse breakout by mistake but you should verify that.
January 29, 201412 yr Author It is indeed a forward breakout cable which goes from the sff 8087 port on the M1015 to the SATA connection on the hard drive. To confirm the part number for my breakout cable is: 8087-SATA7F-30-1M And when I uplug the 8087 cable from the PORT 0 point on the M1015 (while my system is powered down) then turn on the tower it boots normally into unRAID. However if I leave the cable connected it gets stuck at the "Loading Operating System" stage.
January 30, 201412 yr Author Anyone else have any recommendations? This is a serious problem as I have to keep the side off of my case so i can access the cable every time i have to restart it (which recently is quite a lot)...
January 31, 201412 yr See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg121128#msg121128 Is "Boot Support" disabled?
January 31, 201412 yr I got an ASUS motherboard (used on my test bed) that will refuse to boot from a USB key if I put a new HD that is formatted with NTFS. I use an F8 option to bring up a boot menu which will allow me to select the USB key as the boot device. Once the drive has been precleared, the BIOS will boot from the key. I am not sure why ASUS has decided to set things up this way. (I seem to recall that I can go into the BIOS before the boot sequence starts and reset the BIOS to boot first from the USB key but it is quicker to use the F8 procedure.)
January 31, 201412 yr Author dgaschk I followed the instructions to disable "boot support" but that option simply is not there on my firmware version. I'm running v7.29.00.00 where the link you supplies the OP is using v7.21.00.00. I've heard also that flashing back to previous versions can cause issues on some electronics. Frank. It did indeed switch the boot priority on my motherboard (gigabyte mobo, and yes I think it's stupid as well), but I changed it back to my usb flash key and it still doesn't work.
February 1, 201412 yr Author Anyone have any other recommendations? Anyone have an idea if the most recent firmware has this problem fixed? Edit: Solved. I followed the instructions on this site: http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/ This was the site I used the first time to flash the M1015. However I couldn't get to the menu which had the "Boot Support" option (FW v7.29.00.00). I followed the same instructions but replaced the 2118it.bin and mptsas2.rom with the most recent firmware from the LSI site: http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/lsi-sas-9211-8i.aspx#tab/tab4 That brought me to v7.35.1 and allowed me to change the "Boot Support" option to disabled and now everything boots normally!!
February 5, 201412 yr SergeantCC4 thanks for your report! I am going to flash some M1015 to P18.. let see if I will have the same boot issue with the Supermicro board I will be using.
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